Lawrence Solomon: Fair-trade coffee producers often end up poorer

(May 14, 2011) Coffee is one of our guilty pleasures, and not only because of the calories that can be packed into a double latte. Many of us feel guilty that our pleasure is coming at the expense of the Third World coffee farmer, so much so that we gladly pay more for “fair trade” coffee, which certifies that farmers receive more revenue for their crop.

The study, which followed hundreds of Nicaraguan coffee farmers over a decade, concluded that farmers producing for the fair trade market “are more often found below the absolute poverty line than conventional producers. Over a period of ten years, our analysis shows that organic and organic-fair trade farmers have become poorer relative to conventional producers.”

These findings do not surprise me. I speak as someone who has had contact with various Third World producers in my capacity as president of Green Beanery, a company I founded seven years ago to raise funds for Energy Probe Research Foundation, a federally registered charity that I manage. Green Beanery sells more varieties of coffee, including fair trade and organic coffees, than any other company in Canada, giving me occasion to witness the nature of the fair trade business, and hear first hand of its impact on small producers that supply us.

The fair trade business is filled with contradictions. For starters, it discriminates against the very poorest of the world’s coffee farmers, most of whom are African, by requiring them to pay high certification fees. These fees — one of the factors that the German study cites as contributing to the farmers’ impoverishment – are especially perverse, given that the majority of Third World farmers are not only too poor to pay the certification fees, they’re also too poor to pay for the fertilizers and the pesticides that would disqualify coffee as certified organic. Their coffee is organic by default but because the farmers can’t provide the fees that certification agencies demand to fly down and check on their operations, the farmers lose out on the premium prices fetched by certified coffee.

To add to the perversity, it’s an open secret that the certification process is lax and impossible to police, making it little more than a high-priced honour system. Although the certification associations have tightened flaws, farmers and middlemen who want to get around the system inevitably do, bagging unearned profits. Those who remain scrupulous and follow the onerous and costly regulations – another source of inefficiency the German study notes — lose out.

Most merchants of certified coffees are aware of these contradictions but most won’t be aware of other problems in the certification business. For Third World farmers to qualify as fair trade producers, and thus obtain higher prices for their coffee, farmers must join cooperatives. In some Third World societies, farmers readily accept the compromises of communal enterprise. In others, they balk. In patriarchal African societies, for example, the small coffee farm is the family business, its management a source of pride to the male head of the household. Joining a cooperative, and being told when and what and how to plant entails loss of dignity.

The contradictions extend to consumers of coffee in the West. Several years ago, I received a call from a church in Kingston, Ontario, inquiring whether Green Beanery could supply it with freshly roasted fair trade coffee on a weekly basis. Along the way, the church officer mentioned that the parishioners wanted to do what they could to help poor farmers in the Third World. I replied that I’d be happy to supply the church, but I also advised him that fair trade coffee would not help the poorest of farmers – these smallholders are actually hurt when Western consumers forsake them for coffee produced by better-off farmers who can afford the certification fees. I also mentioned that various coffees produced by small farmers in some of the neediest parts of Africa would taste superb while costing the church less, allowing it to spend the difference on some other worthwhile cause.

After a long pause, the church official replied something like: “I still think the parishioners would feel better knowing that they were drinking fair trade coffee.”

Some mistakenly believe that certified coffee is superior in some way. Not so. The small-scale farms whose local ecologies produce distinctive, niche coffee beans can’t operate on a scale that would justify certification. Neither is certified coffee different at all. In fact, at Green Beanery we have received bags of coffee, some labelled fair trade, some not, grown on the very same farm and identical in every respect. The fair trade certified farmer himself can’t tell which beans will be sold as fair trade and which not – that decision is made by the higher-ups.

Because the fair trade associations – who in reality run a trade cartel – are intent on keeping the price of fair trade coffee up, they limit the supply of coffee that can be labelled as certified. To the certified farmer’s chagrin, most of his fair trade certified crop will end up being sold as uncertified conventional coffee. In this price-fixing game, the fair-trade farmer is the pawn and the joke is on the customer.

Lawrence Solomon is founder of Green Beanery, which runs a roastery and coffee shop in Toronto as well as selling coffee online. Green Beanery is not a member of the fair trade associations described. LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com

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Lawrence,
Indeed – the joke is on the consumers. Common sense will tell you that large price gap between the premium price of “fair trade” coffee and the extra fifty cents/pound paid to the farmer does not match the claims of fair pricing. Anyone can claim to have their own interpretation of what is fair to suit their needs, but I suspect that it is a question of time before the general public catches on.